A Song for Cambodia

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BfK No. 175 - March 2009

Cover StoryThis issue’s cover illustration by John Kelly is from Terry Deary’s new series Master Crook’s Crime Academy: Burglary for Beginners. Terry Deary is interviewed by Elizabeth Hammill. Thanks to Scholastic Children’s Books for their help with this March cover.

A Song for Cambodia

A picture story book that operates on several different levels, but one that has a profound message of hope and of the healing power of music. The book tells the story of Arn, a young boy growing up in Cambodia surrounded by his family and music, whose life is utterly changed and his community torn apart by the invasion of the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Along with other children Arn is sent to a work camp to a desperate life of hardship planting rice. They work in silence until one day the soldiers ask for volunteers to join a musical group to play marching songs. Music becomes the boy’s means of survival and later a chance for healing when he is rescued from a refugee camp and taken to America. The story is a true one and today Arn Chorn-Pond continues his efforts to revive Cambodian arts and music. A remarkable story that encompasses history, music and the power of hope.